"Apocalyptic" Scenes Of Mass Graves, Destruction, As 400 Slaughtered In Raids
As the Middle East rumbles with further war and conflict, Africa is seething with bloodshed and terror, both state and non-state. Libya, China, France and the United States are now taking a greater interest in the various conflicts that have raged there for years, all but unnoticed by most in the West, outside of the occasional appalling body count on page 12 of a city daily :
Sudan and Chad grow closer to all out war. They accuse each other of sending militia forces into each other's territories, or backing rebel forces, and of allowing and/or encouraging massacres and destruction of villages close to their shared border.U.N. officials have warned of the possibility of increasing violence in the region where Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic meet.
Fighting in Sudan's western Darfur region has left as many as 450,000 dead from violence and disease.
Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, the Janjaweed, which is blamed for widespread attacks and rapes against ethnic Africans.
On Monday, the Sudanese military said 17 of its soldiers were killed repelling a Chadian army raid on a Sudanese border town in western Darfur.
The United Nations is still rallying to get a larger commitment to peacekeeping forces from the United States and the EU, but enthusiasm is low for deploying forces into a conflict where the body count is guaranteed to be high.
From the Washington Post :
Sudanese Janjaweed militiamen killed as many as 400 people in the volatile eastern border region near Sudan, leaving an "apocalyptic" scene of mass graves and destruction, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.The attacks took place March 31 in the border villages of Tiero and Marena, about 550 miles from Chad's capital, N'Djamena. Chadian officials initially said that 65 people had died but that the toll was certain to rise.
"Estimates of the number of dead have increased substantially and now range between 200 and 400," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. "Because most of the dead were buried where their bodies were found -- often in common graves owing to their numbers -- we may never know their exact number."
The attackers encircled the villages and opened fire, pursued fleeing villagers, robbed women and shot the men, UNHCR said. Many who survived the initial attack died later from exhaustion and dehydration, often while fleeing.
U.N. officials have warned of the possibility of increasing violence in the region where Chad, Sudan and the Central African Republic meet.
Fighting in Sudan's western Darfur region has left as many as 450,000 dead from violence and disease.
Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, the Janjaweed, which is blamed for widespread attacks and rapes against ethnic Africans.
On Monday, the Sudanese military said 17 of its soldiers were killed repelling a Chadian army raid on a Sudanese border town in western Darfur.
Now Libya's Muammar Gaddafi is getting involved more involved, in trying to keep out more UN forces, and cooling tensions between Chad and Sudan :
...Gaddafi is steering Chad’s opposition to a UN military peacekeeping force in its violence-torn east, where civilians are being killed in droves as a proposed UN deployment stalls, analysts say.
They say Gaddafi, a critic of Western democracy and self-styled champion of African nationalism, has stepped up pressure on his southern neighbour, Chadian President Idriss Deby, to resist a planned UN military force for eastern Chad.
The country’s desolate east, caught up in violence that combines marauding armed raiders, domestic insurgency and ethnic conflict, has become a mirror of the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur, itself torn by war since 2003.
“Libya’s primary objective is to ensure an international military force does not deploy,” said Colin Thomas-Jensen, Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank.
The stalling over the Chad UN force now mirrors the situation in Sudan’s Darfur, where the Sudanese government has long been resisting international pressure for UN peacekeepers to bolster a struggling African Union military contingent.
The Libyan leader, who likes to wear a small outline map of Africa on his suits, has taken the lead in trying to broker peace between feuding neighbours Chad and Sudan, whose forces clashed on the border this week.
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